What if the American government declared murder to be legal for an hour? That is the unsettling premise of a dark comedy called “The Magnificent Hour,” which is part of the New York International Fringe Festival. The theater company Experimental Troupe Comedy performs the play next Tuesday through Saturday at the Theater at the Center for Architecture.

A clock onstage shows time elapsing as the disturbing hour unfolds. Individuals wrestle with the morality of killing. To do so, one first has to visit the local Bureau of Assassination and fill out a form. How violent is this show? “People do die,” said Jamil Ellis, a founder of the theater troupe.

Mr. Ellis began the Experimental Troupe Comedy in 1994 with five other other classmates at Stuyvesant High School. At the Fringe Festival kick-off party on Thursday at Discotheque on West 19th Street, the Knickerbocker talked with two of the founders: Mr. Ellis (class of 1995) and Chris Chan Roberson (1994).They are continuing in a long tradition of Stuyvesant graduates who have entered theater. Other actors who have attended Stuyvesant over the years include James Cagney (1918), Ben Gazzara (1946), Paul Reiser(1973), Tim Robbins (1976), Lucy Liu (1986), and producer Joseph Mankiewicz (1924).

Mr. Ellis went on to study computer engineering at Columbia University. Mr. Roberson studied film at New York University, where he made an undergraduate film based on the Yiddish proverb, “If God owned a house on Earth, people would throw rocks at it.” Upon graduation, he joined the NYU faculty, where he teaches film editing and cinematography.

Mr. Roberson and Mr. Ellis have worked together over the years on various projects, including a film called “February,” which was released in Thailand. For that film, they managed to get enough permits to close down Times Square for filming one night in November 2003.

Mr. Roberson described a film he has been making called “Space Pirates,” about gentrification on the Lower East Side.

The Knickerbocker met actors from another Fringe Festival production that explores violent themes. Readers may have heard about Margaret Edson’s play “Wit” about ovarian cancer. They are less likely to have heard of “Hit,” a play about three gangster hit men, two living and one dead. The two living hit men meet up when they both arrive to kill the same victim, who does not show up. The Knickerbocker talked with actor Joel Citty, who portrays the hit man named Wyatt.

Is there a New York connection to the drama? Mr. Citty, who hails from Austin, Texas, said that in the play, his character, Wyatt, mentions that he has a daughter at New York University.

The Fringe Festival features 183 plays this year, but the Knickerbocker seemed only to have encountered the more violent ones. In the musical comedy “Go-Go Kitty, GO,” there are “biker chick kick fights,” said actor Bill Cohen. Fellow actor Vin Knight describes this campy show as “if Russ Meyer had done ‘All the President’s Men.'” The play has onstage motorcycle chases and involves reporters on the trail of a suspicious presidential candidate. Instead of Woodward and Bernstein at the Washington Post, this play features Woodman and Weinstein of the Washingtonville Exposure, played respectively by actors Arthur Aulisi and Mr. Cohen. Mr. Cohen and Mr. Aulisi said the play also has references to the movies “Serpico,” “Billy Jack,” and “The Matrix.”

Mr. Aulisi was born in Gloversville, N.Y., at the foot of the Adirondacks, where immigrant Samuel Goldwyn became a glove salesman. Mr. Cohen was born in Boro Park.

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LOVE AND DEATH Speaking of hit men and violence, game show producer and “Gong Show” host Chuck Barris claimed to have been a CIA assassin in his book “Confessions of a Dangerous Mind: An Unauthorized Biography” (Miramax).

Speaking downtown Thursday, Mr. Barris told how a CIA officer once disputed this claim by saying, “I think [Barris] was standing too close to his gong.”

Mr. Barris made an appearance at Barnes & Noble Astor Place to talk about his love story, “You and Me, Babe” (Carroll & Graf). Although originally published in 1974, the book has been rewritten and expanded.

Mr. Barris read very briefly, saying the only people who enjoy hearing authors read are the authors themselves.

He said he would love to be remembered as a writer but instead would be remembered as host of the “Gong Show.”

He asked himself a series of questions and offered answers before taking questions from the audience. “Wasn’t the book going to be a movie?” he asked himself. He replied that Richard Zanuck and David Brown – “the Miramax of the ’70s” – once offered him $185,000 but he held out for $250,000. “So,” Mr. Barris said to audience laughter, “they passed and made ‘Jaws.'”